Uxbridge man gets jail time for arson of his own home

Wednesday

Jan 15, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 15, 2014 at 6:16 PM

By Lindsay CorcoranDaily News Staff

WORCESTER – An Uxbridge man pleaded guilty to arson on Tuesday and was sentenced to a minimum of one and a half years in state prison after setting fire to his own house last summer.
Christian Carven, 43, formerly of 4 Albee Road, pleaded guilty to arson of a dwelling after three-alarm fire on July 3, 2013 destroyed his home.
Worcester Superior Court Judge James Lemire sentenced Carven to one and a half to two years in state prison on the arson charge. Carven also pleaded guilty to malicious destruction of property over $200 and was sentenced to five years probation after his release from prison.
As conditions of his probation, Carven must stay away from the neighborhood, with a one-mile exclusion zone from the intersection of Albee and Millville roads, and the witnesses. He will also be monitored by GPS device and undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluations and treatment. He will also undergo random drug testing for illegal drugs and alcohol.
Fire investigators, with the help of a state police canine, found evidence of a flammable liquid in the home where Carven lived with his wife and two children, who were not home at the time of the fire.
Carven was charged two days after the fire and held on $100,000 bail after a prosecutor noted he was a suspect in several other suspicious fires in the neighborhood from 2005 and two in 2009.
He was not charged in any of the other fires, according to the Worcester District Attorney's office.
In the case of the arson at his home, prosecutors presented evidence at the time that Carven had been seen leaving his home on a bicycle shortly before the fire.
Before he left, he and his wife had an argument after she discovered evidence he had been drinking and then left with the two kids and said she planned to file for divorce, the prosecutor said.
Contact Lindsay Corcoran at 508-634-7582 or lcorcoran@wickedlocal.com. Follow her on Twitter @LacorcMDN.